Bobby Ongpin

This afternoon (Tuesday) at the Alphaland ballroom of City Club in Makati, his family, friends and business associates will pay their final tribute to the late Roberto Luis Melchor Velayo Ongpin.

Bobby or RVO died early morning of Feb. 5, 2023 in his bayside villa in Balesin, the members-only beach resort he built from scratch off Lamon Bay, Quezon province. He was 86.

This tribute is based on a previous column I had written for the Manila Standard.

Bobby Ongpin was a management expert, public servant, entrepreneur and wheeler-dealer par excellence. Very few in the business world could match his guts, self-confidence, visioning and power of execution.

In defining Ongpin’s legacy, remember five things which make him a true patriot and hero in the mold of his great, great grandfather, the 19th century candlemaker Roman T. Ongpin (1847-1912) of Binondo. Roman funded the Philippine Revolution. Roman’s son, Alfonso, was the father of Bobby’s father, Luis Ongpin, a stockbroker.

One, Bobby Ongpin built the Philippines’ premier high-end property development company, Alphaland Corporation.

Alphaland has had four major projects: 1) the 494-hectare Balesin Island Club; the Alphaland Makati Place (which has a hotel and a members-only City Club); 2) the Alphaland Baguio Mountain Lodges, the Forbes Park of the North; 3) the Alphaland Southgate Corp., a Makati commercial building which was later sold to generate funds to pay all of Ongpin’s bank debts and 4) the ambitious Boracay-type beach resort, the 732-hectare Patnanungan island.

Bobby also owned 58 percent of Atok Big Wedge Mining Co. which has a significant stake in drilling rights over 880,000 hectares of water in the West Philippine Sea, the Reed Bank (Recto Bank) believed to have between 3.9 trillion cubic feet and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, worth between $25 billion and $100 billion.

Even without Atok Big Wedge’s speculative potential, Alphaland is estimated to have an intrinsic value of $2.6 billion. My BizNewsAsia said Ongpin’s networth was valued at $2.1 billion.

Two, RVO was the youngest head (1964-1979) of the SyCip, Gorres, Velayo and Co. (SGV) and built it to become the largest professional services firm (accounting, audit, tax and management services) west of the Mississippi. At its peak, more than 80 percent of the Philippines’ largest corporations had SGV as their auditor.  SGV had 23 offices in eight countries. Engaging SGV gave its clients the seal of good housekeeping and immense credit credibility.

In 1985, SGV joined Arthur Andersen & Co. which later went under, bringing down SGV with it in reputational damage. By then a ranking Cabinet official of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Bobby vehemently opposed SGV’s tie-up with Andersen.

Three, Bobby was the most visionary of all Philippine trade ministers. Defying a colossal economic crisis, he envisioned a massive Philippine industrialization with his overarching 11 major industrial projects (MIPs). These included an integrated steel mill, copper smelter, aluminum smelter, petrochemical complex, phosphate fertilizer plant, diesel engine manufacturing, cement industry expansion, integrated pulp and paper mill, heavy engineering industries and an alcogas plant.

The MIPs would have transformed the Philippines into a NIC (newly industrializing country) almost overnight but a debt crisis, cronyism and the ouster of Marcos Sr. in 1986 sent Ongpin’s projects into oblivion. Today, the projects remain valid and viable.

Four, RVO helped stabilize the country at its gravest peril, from 1983-early 1986, by setting up the Binondo Central Bank (BCB), a black market foreign exchange operations to prevent the peso from devaluing into depths beyond the reach of everyone.

The Aug. 21,1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. triggered the most debilitating economic crisis ever which provoked a massive capital flight, phenomenal loss of investor confidence, an unprecedented debt crisis, runaway inflation and a run on the country’s precious foreign reserves.

At one point, the dollar reserves fell to as low as $1 million, with the peso threatening to lose its value, from P8.54 to $1 in 1982, to P11.11 in 1983 post-assassination and to as high as P20 per dollar before 1984.

Using Marcos’ martial law powers and tough-as-nails management, Ongpin nurtured the peso rate to a manageable P16.69 in 1984, P16.60 in 1985 and P20 per dollar by the time the strongman was ousted in the February 1986 People Power.

To stabilize the peso-dollar rate, Ongpin gathered daily seven major forex traders responsible for generating most of the country’s dollar earnings. All their dollars must be surrendered daily to the BCB and profits were capped at a certain ratio of the peso-dollar rate. The annals of the central bank do not give credit to Ongpin’s herculean and patriotic efforts.

Five, unfortunately, Ongpin’s peso-dollar stabilization helped trigger the 1986 EDSA People Power.

Not many people know it but EDSA I was triggered by greed and was won by a lie. The crowds that massed on EDSA on Feb. 24, 1986, Monday and Feb. 25, Tuesday, were there not to stage a revolt but to hold a picnic. June Keithley had announced on radio at 7 a.m. of Feb. 24, 1986 that the Marcoses had left. It was a lie.

The greed arose from a Chinese forex trader who violated the peso-dollar trading band imposed by the Binondo Central Bank under Secretary Ongpin who had the erring trader arrested and loaded into a van.

Unfortunately, the forex trader died inside a van. Unfortunately again, the trader happened to be a man of then-Armed Forces chief Fabian C. Ver. Angered, the dreaded military chief had 22 of Ongpin’s security men, provided by RAM leader Gringo Honasan, arrested.

Then marines Captain Ariel Querubin arrested 19 of RVO’s men to be brought to Fraile Island, off Corregidor, where suspects were routinely killed.  Querubin disobeyed the kill order.

Morning of Feb, 22, 1986, Ongpin went looking for his men. He called up then-defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile. The latter thought their coup plot had been unmasked and staged the People Power revolt instead.

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